Official: $59 in gas tax per driver reaches county roads

Drivers know how much they are spending at the gas pump. But few understand how little of it goes into road maintenance, said Scott Merillat, Lenawee County Road Commission managing director.

An average driver traveling 20,000 miles a year pays $190 a year in taxes, he said, but only $15 a year goes to maintain non-primary, county roads.

Merillat drew up a simple explanation that shows how Michigan fuel taxes translate into funding for the roads people drive on. He distributed the one-page explanation to township representatives during annual meetings this month where plans for local road projects are discussed.

Township officials said the most common question they get from residents is about why their gas taxes don’t do more to fix the roads, he said.

“For some reason, everybody feels they pay more than their fair share in gas taxes,” Merillat said.

One veteran township official told him he appreciated the one-page diagram of how gas taxes are divided by saying, “This is the most useful piece of information I’ve ever gotten.”

Merillat based his calculation on a driver buying gas for a car getting 20 miles per gallon and traveling 20,000 miles a year. That comes out to 1,000 gallons of a gas a year.

Multiplied by Michigan’s 19-cent-per-gallon fuel tax, the revenue is $190 a year, or less than $16 a month.

Twenty percent of the $190 is taken off the top in Lansing, leaving $152 to go into the Act 51 formula that divides it among state, county, city and village road agencies.

The Michigan Department of Transportation and county road commissions each get 39 percent and the remaining 22 percent goes to cities and villages.

The road commission gets a $59 share of the original $190. The county’s fuel tax revenue is then divided, 75 percent for primary roads and 25 percent for local roads. That comes out to $15 a year, or $1.25 a month, to maintain local roads.

Even if the gas tax was doubled, there would not be enough to do the work needed on local roads, Merillat said. The figures, he said, highlight the importance of local road funding by townships that has totaled about $3 million a year in Lenawee County.